Bathroom Makeover Day 15: It’s All In The Details

Last Updated on December 24, 2015 by Kristi Linauer

Have you ever spent hours and hours on a room, installing trim, caulking trim, priming trim, painting trim, and doing all other kinds of little detail work, only to get to the end of your day, take a look at the room, and think to yourself, “It looks like I haven’t done a darn thing today!!!!”

Welcome to Day 15 of my bathroom makeover.

Yesterday was all about trim. My mirror is installed now, so that definitely made a big difference in the room.

I absolutely love how it looks over the vanity!!

But other than that one big change, the rest of it was tedious, time-consuming, frustrating stuff that I know in my mind makes all the difference in the world in a finished room, but seems like such a waste of time when I’m actually doing the work. Know what I mean?

I got all of the trim installed on the faux wood plank walls. I got all of the trim and baseboards installed around the tub and toilet (which was NOT easy with the toilet there, but since I’ve already uninstalled and reinstalled that thing twice, I was NOT about to do it again just to install some trim.)

(By the way, my vanity is not that dark and gold. The first picture is more accurate…at least it is on my computer. That picture above makes it look way too dark and harsh.)

I got the trim installed on both sides of the door.

I got all of the trim caulked, and all of the nail holes filled with wood filler. And then I got quite a bit of it painted.

So in reality, it was a very productive day. I just really hate installing, caulking, wood filling, sanding, priming, and painting trim. I’d rather do just about anything else than do trim.

BUT…it’s a necessary part of the process.

I also took the advice that many of you gave me regarding my light situation. Since the original glass shades on the light didn’t allow enough clearance between them and the wall for my mirror frame to fit, I just picked up some new smaller glass shades.

That was certainly a much easier solution that what I had planned!!!

I also used some leftover cedar 2″ x 4″ lumber (leftover from my elevated garden beds that I made last summer), and cut six pieces into 26″ lengths. Then I sanded them with 80-grit sandpaper, followed by 150-grit sandpaper, and gave them a coat of Early American stain (Minwax).

I’m hoping that these will become shelves over the toilet, so we’ll see if that works out. It might end up being too much wood, in which case, I’ll just go with white. But since I already had the cedar 2″ x 4″ lumber on hand, and my countertop is made of cedar, I thought it might be worth a try.

Which reminds me, I also got two more coats of polyurethane applied to my countertop yesterday. Wet polyurethane was difficult to work around, especially when I was caulking, wood filling, and sanding trim in the room. But somehow, I made it work.

And the last thing I accomplished was painting my door…or at least, part of my door.

I got all of the inside parts painted, and just needed to paint the outside areas, but I ran out of time. It was 1:30am, and Matt was insisting that we go to bed “at a reasonable time”. 😀 That made me giggle. I’m not sure there’s anything “reasonable” about working on a bathroom makeover until 1:30am. And truth be told, if he was capable of sleeping without me in the room (it’s sweet that he can’t sleep without me there, but also a bit frustrating for me), I probably would have worked all night just to get all of the trim work finished…completely.

I have five more days to meet my 20-day bathroom makeover goal. I’m pretty sure I can do it.